_____________Original message ____________
Subject: Re: Some excerpts from AdobeXMP SDK Documentation
Sender: ext Jan Grant <Jan.Grant@bristol.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 19:27:40 +0300
On Thu, 26 Sep 2002, Patrick Stickler wrote:
> OK. The short answer is yes, but it is you, and not Jena
> that is presuming string based semantics.
The question that this raises, then, is whether it is you, and not the
adobe API, that is presuming value-based semantics :-)
It is IMO the Adobe API, though I will certainly not deny
my biased position, I really did take care not to read my
own preferences into the documentation and examples.
Folks are free to evaluate the materials for themselves
and draw their own conclusions (though note the
recent comments from Adobe).
Sorry for the flippancy, but you appear to be saying that evidence from
examining an API is primarily based on the views of the examiner.
I would say that both XMP and Jena will allow a developer
to impose either string or value based semantics, but that
XMP presumes and promotes in its API value based semantics.
Jena is agnostic.
The examples you've uncovered are interesting, though: do they support
the notion that the adobe api has value, not string-based semantics for
datatyped literals?
I believe that the recent comments from Alan Lillich
indicate both value based semantics and long range
datatyping by means of property ranges. While not
possible to fully escape some involvement with lexical
representations, XMP apps care about values, not
strings used to denote values.
Patrick